Captain’s bars are two separate (silver) bars like this. The WO-2 insignia is two lines on a single rectangular device (gold in the case of the Marines.)
Right… even a CWO-5 with decades of experience, real commission and all, is still outranked by the greenest ROTC 2nd LT commissioned yesterday.
The point is that warrant officers, regardless of their status as warranted or commissioned, fall into their own category of technical specialists, and while they’re considered officers, as far as going to officers’ clubs and the other privileges of officer-dom, they’re separate from the O-grade officers. There’s no getting promoted FROM CWO-5 without getting a new commission as a O-grade officer, and you’re still somewhere above an E-9, and below an O-1 in terms of rank. No idea about pay though.
The professionals rise as high as their specialty has posts in the particular service they joined. Quite obviously most of the higher flag/general grades are filled with line officers rather than specialists.
The Wikipedia article glosses things over. The grade at commission varies according to the specific profession, specialization, experience and degrees (e.g. undergraduate vs. Masters vs. professional doctorate)
Didnt reconnaissance satellites make out the color of Major Houlihan’s bush?
Noted.
Which begs: said Marine is said to be WO-4.
Insignia on collar is the defining one, so can Wiki be wrong? * clutches breast *
ETA: United States Marine Corps rank insignia - Wikipedia suggests even three stripes?
Sheesh. If I meet a WO and don’t know…
nm. Stale page load.
The way WO pin-on insignia works in all the US services, except the Army after the late 70s(*), is up to W4 the more bands of color and breaks of exposed metal, the higher the rank(**), and all silver is higher than all gold.
So W1 and W2 are gold bar, W3/4/5 is silver; W1 and W3 have two wide bands of color and one break of exposed metal, W2 and W4 have three narrower bands of color and two breaks of exposed metal.
W5, when used, is a stripe of color lengthwise down the middle, exposed metal on all sides.
(*Army W1 to 4 is silver bar with one black band per grade)
(**conversely, in Navy/CG sleeve cuff braid, it’s the fewer the color breaks, the higher the grade)
This is correct. The most senior CW5 is still outranked by a 2LT. If that CW5 gave the 2LT a piece of advice and the 2LT chose to disregard it they would be a tremendous fool, but it is still their decision by virtue of their position as superior officer. Also, any CW5 who disrespected a 2LT (for example, by not rendering a salute) would be demonstrating a tremendous lack of professionalism and doesn’t deserve their position.
It is entirely possible for a Warrant Officer to switch to be an O-Grade Officer, but this would be kind of stupid. A senior Warrant often has more* influence *than a junior lieutenant (if not legal authority). And TBH, my life as a Warrant is way more awesome and I am far happier than I would be if I were an O-Grade. Nonetheless, if someone hypothetically did make the jump to the O-Grades, the Army has what is called the “Save Pay” program to ensure people do not get paid less for what should be an advance in rank. This is governed by US Code: Title 37, Section 907(a).
Where I disagree with this post is with the idea that the Warrant Officer cohort is excluded from the other perks or aspects of officer-dom. Several years ago the Army announced a change in policy whereby the Warrant Officers were to be “fully integrated” into the officer corps. As time goes on, Warrants have increasingly been given access to these perks and opportunities and increasingly included in functions that would otherwise have been officer-only. At the same time, symbols that set the Warrants apart have been abolished (for example, Warrants now wear branch insignia rather than their Eagle Rising insignia). This is cultural shift the Army has been going through for the last decade or so and is still in progress.
In my entire military career, I never met a single Warrant or Chief Warrant Officer who would not have saluted a 2nd Lieutenant or Ensign.
For those who are interested, here is a Department of Defense site showing officer rank insignia for the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard. The Commissioned Corps of both the PHS and the NOAA use Navy rank insignia. Here is the DoD site for Enlisted rank/rate insignia.
ETA: @Chihuahua
AIUI the Army is different from the other services today in having a fairly large WO corps.
USAF even in the 1970s had a very small WO group that was in many ways “neither fish nor fowl.” And as a small constituency it had little influence over its trajectory through the bureaucracy. So it eventually died out.
AFAIK USN/USMC/USCG now each have a fairly small WO corps in danger of the same kind of shrinkage to oblivion. Whereas Army, mostly by virtue of the large number of WO aviators, has a thriving WO corps.
In one sense, the idea of a cadre of career technical specialists with no pretensions to management makes lots of sense. And moreso all the time as the jobs get more complex.
The challenge used to be one of pay. Which is why doctors & lawyers enter as O3s vice O1s and even then often promote to O4 earlier than line officers do. It’s all because O1 & O2 pay isn’t competitive with entry level salaries in the civilian world. And, unlike pilots, the service is taking in pre-trained civilians, not taking in untrained civilians then providing the training.
I haven’t seen the pay tables in years, but if indeed a senior WO4 or WO5 is making O3 or O4 money then it looks like DoD has seen the light.
Which makes me think we might see a resurgence in WOs in the other services. Including perhaps (eventually) USAF.
Thoughts?
I think you misread- I said that WOs get the perks of officer-dom, but aren’t O-grade officers, and don’t promote into their ranks either.
They seem to be a separate, lower-ranking type of technical specialist officers.
That would be a 2-star general. I’d venture that there’s more than one one-star general in the Army’s Nurse Corps. The current director of the US Navy Nurse Corps is a 2-star Admiral, the Chief of the US Air Force is, likewise, a 2-star general.
The Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is a special case as it’s basically one corps composed of a variety of medical professionals including doctors and nurses, among others. The highest rank in the PHSCC is either the Surgeon General of the United States or the Assistant Secretary for Health if the Assistant Secretary happens to be a member of the PHSCC himself or herself. Technically, a nurse could be appointed Surgeon General; however, I don’t believe that has ever happened. The PHSCC ranks are kind of interesting in that they, in effect, have two names for each rank. Surgeon General is the equivalent of Vice Admiral, while Junior Assistant (currently the lowest rank in the Corps) is the equivalent of Ensign. Warrant Officer grades are authorized by law but are not used.
Me neither. It might not be the snappiest salute and he won’t put down his coffee to do it but there will be a salute.
So… let me see if I have this right. Warrant officers fulfill a role where you want more technical expertise and experience than you’re likely to get with an enlisted soldier, but without the command expectations or responsibility that you’d have with an O-grade officer?
How do the other services handle that role? Does the Army *really *use warrant officers more than the other services, outside of helicopter pilots?
2016 military pay scale righ here for you. CWO5 at 20 years would be making O4 at 14 years to O6 at 3 years pay (but I’ve never heard of someone being O6 these days with just 3 years service); a CWO5 at 38 years service (the top of the pay chart) would be receiving O6 at 18 years to O7 at 8 years service pay. Those are, of course rough approximations, give or take just a few bucks.
Check out the pay range for E-9 in the link I provided above. Each of the Services which have Enlisted members also has a “special pay grade” of “E-10” for the most-senior ranking Enlisted member* (Sergeant Major of the Army, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard). I don’t recall what their increase in pay over the other E-9s at the same time in grade is; the special grade is so that their retirement pay is figured on that rate as it’s the base pay and not a special allowance.
*The Senior Enlisted Advisor for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be the senior Enlisted member of his branch of service, while the second most senior would be the SMA/CMPON/CMSgtAF/SgtMajMC/CMPOCG (as the case might be).
The Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman currently has a monthly base pay of $7,489.80. The SMA/CMPON/CMSgtAF/SgtMajMC/CMPOCG each gets a monthly base pay of $7,894.50. There is no difference in that base pay for time in service.
I shamelessly lifted this information from a few pages on the Wiki.
The common way the story is told is that when USAF spun off, all major aviation assets in the Army would go there, including its commissioned aviators, and the Army would retain spotter planes, light utility transports and helos, at the time considered minor auxiliaries, and keep flying them with WOs as carried over from WW2; then Vietnam happened and now guess what you need a huge rotor fleet and a large WO pilot corps,
True, the commissioned pilots will spend virtually all their O1 time and a good piece of their time as O2 in different phases of training and schools.
This is not true.
Technically it’s true that a cw5 is outranked by a O-1 but in reality a CW-5 is accorded the respect of a lTC.
My uncle was a Navy surgeon and I’m fairly sure he made rear admiral. He had some hospital administrative duties at the end beyond just operating.